Mastered for iTunes: Rolling out on a worldwide basis, Apple is now featuring songs and albums that have been specifically mastered for the iTunes Store to provide the best sound quality for the format.

They would have to be crazy to stop offering lossy if they do offer lossless, I don't think anybody here was expecting that. "Shorter battery life" is not an issue at all though. With an iPod Classic, to me the difference if there's one, is negligible, one wouldn't notice it unless doing real meticulous testing.

The reduced battery life of lossless files are still a big issue for people using iPod's featuring hard drives. In my testing (with a 2009 160GB iPod classic), I can encode up to about 256kbps before the battery life takes a noticeable hit since the HDD has to be accessed a lot more. I conducted several battery life tests on my iPod classic just for the hell of it.

Those results are pretty consistent with my other battery life tests on older iPod's as well (specifically the 3G iPod, 4G iPod, 5G iPod, and 120GB iPod classic). ALAC, AIFF, and PCM WAV drastically reduce the battery life for me on a consistent basis. Is it as bad as with the 3G and 4G iPods? Not nearly and 33 hours is still pretty respectable for a device playing lossless content from an HDD. However, it can be an issue for some people who want to attain or pass Apple's battery life estimates.

As for the whole "Mastered for iTunes" topic, meh. I have only downloaded one album so far (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo soundtrack) and a free Alice Cooper song but I am not hearing anything special. I don't have the lossless source to compare the soundtrack to but I have tried to ABX the Alice Cooper song from the lossless source. I failed at that as both releases (the CD and Made for iTunes version) had the same sound quality to me. I kind of think that this might be more of a marketing ploy. Apple might be doing something good behind the scenes, I don't really know. However, it just comes off as being a marketing stunt to try to get people to purchase more content from the iTunes Store since they will see that little "Mastered for iTunes" stamp in the album description.

The reduced battery life of lossless files are still a big issue for people using iPod's featuring hard drives. In my testing (with a 2009 160GB iPod classic), I can encode up to about 256kbps before the battery life takes a noticeable hit since the HDD has to be accessed a lot more. I conducted several battery life tests on my iPod classic just for the hell of it.

Those results are pretty consistent with my other battery life tests on older iPod's as well (specifically the 3G iPod, 4G iPod, 5G iPod, and 120GB iPod classic). ALAC, AIFF, and PCM WAV drastically reduce the battery life for me on a consistent basis. Is it as bad as with the 3G and 4G iPods? Not nearly and 33 hours is still pretty respectable for a device playing lossless content from an HDD. However, it can be an issue for some people who want to attain or pass Apple's battery life estimates.

I did say "unless doing real meticulous testing". But anyway, is it an actual issue? Are many people playing 30+ (or even 10+) hours straight of music, without touching the iPod? Cause once you take the screen constantly turning on, and skipping and whatnot, the difference should shrink, but still you get an inordinately long amount of play time. I remember when 2 hours on a Discman was long enough!